Tools

XL-Sized Code Drop To User Acceleration

By Adrian Bridgwater, September 24, 2013

Advanced enterprise release coordination down streamlined paths

Boston-based XebiaLabs has announced the XL release of its delivery acceleration software. Integrating release management and execution together, this product builds "automated delivery pipelines" to plan, execute, and track both manual and automated tasks from the point of code drop to end-user.

The firm asserts that current software releases consist of a mix of automated and manual tasks, all of which have to be scheduled, coordinated, and carried out.

"Automation and execution of tasks in a typical release cycle is not and cannot be combined with tracking and coordination, since today's planning tools do not provide automation capabilities. This results in time-consuming overhead to keep the release coordinator, the release team, and all other stakeholders in sync. Handling the communications divide between Development, QA, and Operations introduces additional time lags, and increases the risk of miscommunications and errors," said XebiaLabs CEO Coert Baart.

XL release is built around flexible release plans to provide a flexible planner to describe all the manual and automated activities that need to be carried out in releases. Developers can define teams, assign tasks, create checkpoints and gates, and identify dependencies.

There is a promise here of being able to re-plan and adapt to changing circumstances as necessary — plus the chance to re-run release steps, rollback unfinished tasks, and reassign activities while maintaining a full audit trail.

Release templates allow the user to transition to more predictable and efficient release plans by defining release templates for applications (and even entire application families). Essentially, this is a chance to implement continuous delivery by progressing to release pipelines for all your application releases.

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